


Split

by littleoptimistme



Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: F/M, Gen, Human Steven Universe - Freeform, Post Movie, Steven Universe - Freeform, Steven has issues, Temporary Character Death, a little bit of identity theft stuff going on, also identity crisis, for now, he needs a therapist, hes just quiet, pink steven, pink steven is a mess, pink steven is literally no better, pre future, theres two of them now
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-18
Updated: 2020-04-02
Packaged: 2021-02-27 13:49:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 12,654
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22298101
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/littleoptimistme/pseuds/littleoptimistme
Summary: In another world, Spinel might have taken longer, played the game for a few seconds more. Spinel might have dramatically teased each finger, loosening him bit by bit. And perhaps in that world, Steven would have had a moment to think. But in this world, strong, hot, chemical-filled wind swept past them suddenly, and Steven slipped through her fingers, off the side of the injector.Pink Diamond was dead, again.Or was he?
Relationships: Connie Maheswaran/Steven Universe, Pink Diamond & Steven Universe, Pink Steven Universe & Steven Universe
Comments: 72
Kudos: 321





	1. Chapter 1

The hot wind whipped at his clothes and Steven struggled for balance on the smooth red surface of the injector. He felt like his body was weighed down by bags of gravel, like he was being puppeted directly into the ground. He could tell, in a distant part of his mind, that he was hurt worse than he had been in ages. When he swiped at his nose, his wrist came away bloody. He  _ never _ bled. He was too tough for that. But this gem, this  _ insane _ gem, had figured out how to take absolutely everything away from him and twist it all into something strange and unfamiliar and just plain  _ wrong. _

“Spinel, please-” His voice cracked. His throat hurt from where he’d been choked at some point and his arms shook from the effort it had taken to climb the side of the injector. He had to talk her down. He’d done it before. He could do it again.

Standing on the glass-like surface, slowly approaching a gem who wasn’t even facing him, Steven was suddenly reminded of his first confrontation with Lapis, when she stole the ocean and nearly killed them all. It had looked a lot like this. But things were different now. Steven was different.

Why did everyone always want to kill everyone?

Spinel didn’t respond.

He tried again. “We can talk about this-”

A dark chuckle. “I don't wanna play anymore.”

And that was the whole problem, wasn’t it? She was like a little kid. She didn’t understand! She was going to kill an entire  _ planet _ . Because she was mad! “Spinel!” he managed. His voice shook, but this time not in exhaustion. He was so  _ angry. _ Angry at Spinel, angry at his mom for ruining his literal entire life, and countless others. He was angry at himself for not being able to figure out how to fix his gem. He was a leader of the galaxies and he was  _ pathetic- _

Spinel seemed to agree. Her whole body tensed right before she did it, and then she flew around and punched him in the face. He stumbled back, shocked. This wasn’t supposed to happen. He raised his hands in defense but wasn’t quick enough. She flung volley after volley of punches at him, sending Steven spinning to the edge of the platform. He slipped and slid, hands too sweaty to catch him. At the very edge, he windmilled his arms and managed an unsteady stop.

But Spinel was right behind him. Before he could say anything, she whipped him up in the air with her extendable arms and tossed him back and forth like a cat playing with her prey. Beach City tilted back and forth, thousands of feet beneath him, and he scrambled for better purchase on the hand that she had around his wrist.

His heart thumped in his throat and he wasn’t angry anymore. He was terrified. Mind-numbingly, bone shakingly terrified in a way he hadn’t felt in years.

He was going to die.

She glared up at him. “You know, I came here to take my anger out on strangers, but now that I  _ know _ you I want to kill you  _ even more _ !”

In another world, she might have taken longer, played the game for a few seconds more. Spinel might have dramatically teased each finger, loosening him bit by bit. And perhaps in that world, Steven would have had a moment to think.

But in this world, that strong, hot, chemical-filled wind swept past them suddenly, and just as suddenly, Steven slipped through her fingers.

He caught a glimpse of her eyes wide, absolutely horrified as she backtracked, trying to catch him.

Steven screamed.

And he fell.

Faster and faster. His gem glowed briefly. But he couldn’t float. He couldn’t make a shield. He couldn’t do anything. His gem was still injured. And as Beach City came rushing toward Steven, he watched Spinel get smaller and smaller. 

His friends saw it happen. They weren’t far off. Connie pointed and screamed, taking off toward him on Lion. Garnet was quick as well, she lept back across town, arms outstretched.

Connie couldn’t hear the sound of her best friend, her… she didn’t even know what he was at this point, she couldn’t hear him hit the ground. But she felt it in her bones, and deep inside her gut.

His body toppled over the edge and into the molten lava cracks that filled the town.

Silence.

She could hear nothing but the whining scream of panic in her ears. She and Lion flew over rooftops, and when she reached the edge of the incubator, she practically flew off of Lion to race to the crack. She looked down, desperate. The heat singed her hair and bit her cheeks. Someone had their arms around her shoulders, pulling her away from the edge.

This wasn’t happening.

There was the edge of his blue jacket, caught on a crag of rock. But no Steven.

Connie cried and so did Garnet, holding her. The other gems arrived seemingly in seconds. Peal shrieked like some unearthly harpy. “ _ Where is he _ ?”

Just as quickly, Amethyst clamored her way down the crack. She fetched the jacket and started calling his name, voice ragged.

There were people speaking behind her. Garnet, her voice shaking. “I’m gonna kill her.” 

Garnet bent to leap up the injector, but as she did, the ground shook, and the injector began to ease into the sky. Connie squinted, neck craned up. She could see the little figure on the top of the ship, clinging to the edge. A murderer.

Fury wrapped around Connie’s lungs. “Get her! Before she-”

But it was too late. Spinel wasn’t stupid. She screwed up and she wasn’t going to hang around. The injector lifted into the sky, and before anyone could get a grip on it, it shot away.

Leaving the earth a lava-filled disaster. They all stood there, stunned. Amethyst hopped gingerly around the rocks and they waited with bated breath until finally, finally, Amethyst let out a shout.

“What is it?” Connie couldn’t see from this distance. Amethyst’s back was to them and she tugged at something lodged in the rocks, just above the lava.

A final wrench and she fell backward, flinging a shiny, pink gem through the air. It sailed toward them and landed on the ground, sending a rush of energy up from the ground into Connie’s scalp. The electricity tingled, and the gem spun, a diamond, on its tip like a top. Green grew from the ground, grass and flowers sprouted, and lava sank away. Within seconds, the pink stench in the cracks of the earth was gone.

The sun glinted on the surface of a flawless pink diamond.

It’s glow flickered and it teetered. With one last half-hearted glow, it dropped to its side in the grass it had grown with the last of its strength.

The diamond dulled.

Pink Diamond was dead. 

Again.

* * *

The pink diamond munched on popcorn in an empty movie theater and grinned up at the screen. He loved the movies. He loved popcorn. The funny thing about this movie was, the only thing he could see was an array of pink, fluffy clouds. Which wasn’t very interesting.

What movie was this anyway? He stopped chewing and looked around him. And since when did he go to the movies alone? He usually went with-

With

Something fizzled out.

He frowned, swallowed the popcorn.

He usually went with…

He could picture her. Purple? Short? Loud?

Who was that?

As the thought went through his head, the pink clouds on the screen shifted, the image changed. He was now looking at a young, purple-skinned woman with long silver hair, she grinned at him from her spot flat on the sandy beach.

**AMETHYST** spelled out at the bottom of the screen.

Amethyst. Yeah. Yeah, Amethyst. She was Steven’s friend.

The pink diamond frowned. There wasn’t something quite right about that. He was Steven. Steven was him. They were Steven.

Steven was him, but  _ he  _ wasn’t Steven. Something was wrong.

“What’s going on?” He whispered. He dropped the popcorn and rubbed his eyes with the bases of his palms. His head pounded. The image on the screen shifted.

A pink heart.

It zoomed out slowly, spinning in darkness, and as the pink diamond watched, it flipped upside down.

**Spinel** said the bottom of the screen

The encounter played quickly across the screen. A shot through Steven’s eyes, his hands raised. Spinel was clouded through the pink of Steven’s shield. Another picture in space, watching Spinel look out at a desolate garden. He almost got her on his side. And then a shot of her, furious and terrified. He held the destabilizer in his right hand. She was angry again.

They fought. The images were clear and concise, but they weren’t the pink diamond’s. Not exclusively.

The pink diamond shuttered. The room grew colder and the walls shrank in.

Steven Universe was dead. Steven was dead because the pink diamond had failed him. A great wave of grief crashed over him. It was thick and hot and he could hardly breathe around it. So instead, he cried into his hands for a long while. God, he  _ loved  _ Steven. And now he was gone. It wasn’t fair!

After some time, his sobs trickled down to hiccups, and a thought occurred to him. He looked up blearily at the screen, which showed Spinel and her horrified eyes as he fell.

“But if he’s dead, then what am I doing here?”

He felt numb, like every part of him was being too quickly stopped up. Like he was stuffed with dry chaff or crumbled saltines.

He should be dead too, right? That was the plan. Live as Steven. Die with Steven.

“It’s ridiculous. We should have just shattered ourselves,” said a soft, feminine voice. “We were defective from the beginning. Bad coding.”

He looked toward the voice. A few rows down, her feet up on the seat in front of her, sat a young woman with short curly, pink hair. She was delicate and beautiful, like a pink Tinker Bell. She wasn’t wearing what he knew she wore in real life. Instead of that costume, she was dressed in a rocker’s black t-shirt, ripped jeans, and sneakers. Human. The way she always wanted to be.

She looked up at him with diamond eyes, sad. “How many times can you change yourself before there’s nothing left of you at all?”

The pink diamond said nothing. He just stared at her.

“This is your fault,” he said.

“I know.”

“You’re selfish. A- a  _ brat _ . You may be a flawless gem, but something in you is  _ broken!” _

Her jaw tightened and her gentle gaze hardened into a glare. “I  _ know _ . That’s why we’re in this mess.”

“What mess?” He threw his hands in the air. “What’s going on? What even  _ are we _ anymore?”

He blinked, and she was gone, nothing more than a phantom, a dream that never could have been.

The pink diamond stood up. He stepped over the popcorn bowl, walked to the end of the aisle and then stood in front of the exit door. The glowing pink sign seemed to grow brighter the longer he stared at it. He placed a hand on the handle and opened the door.

He entered a pink dressing room.

In front of him was a rack of clothing that went off into dark abyss on both sides. To the left, a chair to sit in. There were no mirrors. The pink diamond didn’t know why. It seemed an obvious oversight.

But when he looked down at himself, it became apparent there were more pressing issues. He was in nothing but his underwear, and he could see that diamond in his stomach, the diamond that  _ was him _ , was no longer positioned top-outward, but had been twisted back to its original position, wide at the bottom, and narrow at the top, still no larger than his fist.

The sight of it this way sent a shiver down his spine but in a strange, distant sort of way. Steven had never seen his gem like this. He would be upset because he wasn’t Pink Diamond. He was Steven...

Except…

The pink diamond didn’t know. He was a pink diamond and things were different now. He knew that. He didn’t know much else. He tried to remember anything before the movie theater and only received a splitting headache in return. Okay. So he wasn’t supposed to think about that.

It was easier to just put on some clothes. He fanned through the rack, curious. He was drawn to the color pink, as could be expected, he supposed. The pink diamond wanted to be Steven or to at least look like him if that was the closest he could get.

He settled on jeans, a black t-shirt with a yellow star, topped by a pink bomber jacket, and tennis shoes. Practical. Familiar. Steven.

He turned back to the door he entered through, but it was gone, replaced by a pink-tinted glass door.

He approached and pressed his face against it, squinting. He had a strange sensation in the back of his mind that not knowing was not usually something he had to deal with. He ought to have access to all things regarding being a pink diamond. But he didn’t? Why didn’t he? He pressed the thought deeper and winced when it hurt again. There was something wrong. Some data errors. _A recursive loop,_ supplied information in his head from somewhere.

And that was the problem, wasn’t it? Gems were made up of coding and then personality and now Steven was dead, which left coding. Was that all he was? The pink diamond didn’t  _ feel _ like coding.

He couldn’t see much through the thick glass.

He needed more input.

And for that, he needed to get out of here.

* * *

Pearl fretted around the diamond, wrapping Steven’s singed jacket around it along with other soft blankets and such. She’d spent hours carefully, cautiously cleaning it, inspecting it for cracks or scrapes. Nothing seemed amiss, thank the stars. She couldn’t bear to not do anything at all.

It had been a week.

Everyone was a wreck. Sapphire and Ruby hadn’t fused in days, their combined grief too large to hold them together. Amethyst was either completely blank, motionless, or she darted around the house, reassuring anyone who would listen. “He’s just taking awhile to reform. Haha! He’s being dumb like you, Pearl!”

Connie and Greg were devastated. They’d both slept in the living room all week long.

Everyone had been fairly busy trying to put the town back together. The lava may have disappeared, but the large cracks in the earth had not, and Beach City was now filled with hundreds of caverns and crevices for things to fall into and get stuck in. The mayor was busy enlisting everyone to build makeshift bridges. Pearl hadn’t been to town in several days, however.

Pearl almost wanted to poof herself, if only to escape the horrible empty quiet that invaded the house now. But she couldn’t do that to the rest of her family. They needed her.

“We’re going to have to tell the diamonds soon,” Sapphire said softly. She sat at the breakfast table, staring at the diamond nested on the coffee table across the room. Her tiny feet dangled above the ground.

Pearl nodded. “Maybe they’ll know what to do.”

The problem lay mostly in all of their collective ignorance in what actually had happened to Steven. He couldn’t be poofed, they thought. But he was  _ gone _ , clearly, and he had hit the ground as a human. The diamond appeared unharmed. Not a scratch on it. So, in theory, Steven was still alive. Or,  _ something _ was alive. A gem couldn’t be killed unless it was shattered. But no gem/organic hybrids existed before Steven as far as they knew, and Pearl didn’t know what to possibly expect. Perhaps he  _ was  _ dead. Perhaps the diamond was just a stone now.

The thought closed off her throat entirely, and she bent her head between her hands, entangling her fingers in her hair.

The problem with telling the diamonds was that they just might kill them. If Steven really was… gone. There would be no way to stop their fury.

But it would be worse if they didn’t tell them and they ended up finding out on their own. Pearl was the most likely to not get shattered, they’d agreed.

When Pearl activated the warp pad, It had been seven days, four hours, and twenty-seven minutes since Steven fell.

She stood ready, posture perfect on the warp pad, and when she landed in the Diamond’s common room, she wasn’t sure what she expected, but it wasn’t this. When she lived on homeworld, the diamonds hardly interacted, let alone ‘hung out’ in the same room.

And yet, here they were. Yellow was seated at a large desk, typing on a complex circular keyboard. Blue was leaning out of the window, waving at a few gems passing by, and White was in another corner of the room, a large book over her eyes (their respective pearls appeared to be deep in a game of Uno Steven must have brought over at some point). This may seem to an outsider to be fairly solitary behavior, but these diamonds were like cats, content to simply be in each other’s presence. This was a far cry from the once-a-century visit they might have made to visit each other, especially White. They’d come a long way.

How incredible Steven’s influence had been. Was. Is.

At the sound of the activated warp pad, all three diamonds looked up with undisguised excitement.

“Steven!” Blue spun around. Her smile froze, and then dropped a little into polite confusion. “Oh. A pearl?”

Yellow deactivated her keyboard and turned in her chair, looking down at Pearl with squinted, calculating eyes. “What are  _ you _ doing here?”

Pearl paid her tone no mind. There were worse things at stake here than Pearl’s pride. She cleared her throat. “Steven’s been poofed.”

Silence.

White dropped her magazine with a  _ snap. _ “Pardon me, but,” She sat up. “I thought he couldn’t be poofed.”

Pearl squirmed inwardly, her stomach ached at her words. But she kept her gaze steady. “You need to come at once. We don’t- we don’t know what's wrong with him or if he’ll come back or-”

The Diamonds were on their feet. “How could this happen?” Yellow shouted.

“I  _ said _ we should have kept her here!”

The warp pad was too small for the diamonds. It would take them time to travel in their ships, but that was the only way.

Yellow leveled a glare at Pearl. “I want  _ all _ the information as soon as we get there.”

Pearl glared right back. “I am doing you a  _ kindness _ by informing you,  _ Yellow _ , for Steven’s sake. Otherwise, believe me, I would have you stay as far away from him as possible.”

Yellow lowered her hands so they were on either side of Pearl, and she knelt down to look her in the eye. Pearl didn’t move but she readied herself. She could have her weapon out in half a second. Would that be enough time to stop her? 

Yellow shook her head. “You are very brave for a pearl,” she muttered. “Stupid. But brave.”

With that, she lifted up and the three of them scurried from the room. Their footsteps shook the floor less and less the further they walked. Pearl didn’t realize how tense she was until she forced her shoulders to relax. The diamonds were too distracted by concern to shatter her, and thank the stars.

The week ended, and another passed. Two weeks became a month. The Diamonds still hadn’t made it from Homeworld. Space travel was intensive and long.

Connie had to go to school, but she came by after and would do her homework on the coffee table next to the gem for a few hours before going home. She’d stay on the weekends sometimes. Pearl would watch her when she wasn’t on missions. Funny how the rest of the world didn’t stop, even though the most important person in their world did.

“This weird kid asked me to homecoming, Steven. I told him no, of course. You already asked me.” Connie paused, looked up from her book toward the gem wrapped up on the table. “I think you did, that is. Maybe I just assumed.” A light laugh. She noticed Pearl in the kitchen and the emotion drained from her face.

No one was the person they were before Steven was poofed. They walked around like shadows, mechanically going on missions, mechanically fulfilling their duties. Days melted into each other.

“He’s not come back,” Greg said one day. His voice was thick as he sat on the stairs of the front porch.

Pearl sat down next to him, folding her body neatly. She hated feeling like this. It was worse than being shattered. It was worse than when Rose was gone. This was the third time Pearl had to lose Pink, in some way or another. But to lose Steven? Losing Steven was worse than both goodbyes combined. She and Greg watched the sun melt slowly into the ocean like a thick dollop of butter in a pan. The wind rustled the curtains in the open window above them, scratching the fabric against the screen.

“He isn’t dead. He isn’t shattered. Therefore, he isn’t dead.”

Greg looked at her. Pearl couldn’t believe she used to hate this man. She couldn’t muster anything but affection now. He looked so utterly exhausted, eyes deep in his head, beard a few days unshaven. His skin was an almost grayish tinge, and he’d lost at least twenty-pounds over this last month. “Rose wasn’t shattered.  _ She’s  _ dead.” He turned back to look at the ocean. “I-I just don’t know how much longer I can keep  _ hoping.  _ God, that’s awful.” His voice broke. “I wish... I had bodies to bury.” He ground the bases of his palms into his eyes. “Does that make me a horrible person?”

Pearl couldn’t speak for a long moment. So instead, she swallowed thickly and placed a hand on his shoulder. “No, Greg. It doesn’t.” She patted him and took back her hand. Her eyes stayed on the sunset. “Every time I lose them, it’s like I lose some of myself with them. And if it keeps going on like this, I don’t know how much is going to be left of me.”

Greg sighed and did what she couldn’t, which was pull her into a kind, tight, so very human, hug. She didn’t resist.

They sat in silence until the sun melted into oblivion and the night crickets began to chirp.

Sapphire and Ruby didn’t realize they  _ couldn’t  _ fuse until a week after Steven was killed. They’d unfused originally because both of their grief had hurt too bad to feel at once. And because they were furious. They were furious that they hadn’t seen it coming, furious they weren’t strong enough to save him.

But after a week, they’d clasped hands again after a weary afternoon. Ruby had been gone for days, looking far and wide for anything that might help. Sapphire was busy looking through various futures, untangling, untangling, constantly untangling a hopelessly tangled knot of futures she could not hope to understand. They’d come home and hugged tiredly, hands tight, desperate for the support they gave each other again. And nothing happened. They held hands. They even tried something of a dance. But even the idea of dancing made them want to cry.

“How can anyone dance when Steven’s dead?!” Ruby shrieked. Hot tears boiled from her eyes and they ended up on the floor of the temple back to back, crying.

* * *

Amethyst smashed the trees with her whip. Pulled back again, let loose.

“Amethyst, you should stop before the whole forest is gone,” said a soft, deadpan voice.

Amethyst paused and turned to see none other than Lapis, walking barefoot toward her.

A rush of anger for no particular reason flew through Amethyst, and she took out another tree. “Who cares about dumb trees anyway.”

“I do.” Lapis said. She bent and picked up a red leaf from the forest floor absently. “I think they’re pretty.”

Amethyst scowled. “What do you want? Where’s Peridot?”

Her forehead creased in frustration and Lapis dropped the leaf. “She’s busy building Art. Hasn’t stopped. I think she thinks if she just keeps going, she’ll come across something that will eventually help Steven.” Lapis’s voice was usually monotone, and this time was no different.

Amethyst envied her, in a deep part of her being. And she hated her for it too. “What’s wrong with you?” Amethyst shouted. “How are you so calm? Don’t you even care-?”

Lapis’s jaw tightened. “Of course, I care that Steven might be gone. I just don’t take it out on trees.”

Amethyst boiled inside. She sacked another tree and felt a little better. “What do you do then?”

Lapis hummed. “Watch TV mostly. It helps you forget for a little while.”

Amethyst considered that.

The whip in Amethyst’s hand felt too heavy. Her chest ached. “Can I join you?”

Lapis nodded.

These were the states the gems were in when the pink diamond reactivated two months, fourteen days, and eleven hours after the death of Steven Universe.


	2. Chapter 2

4:02 AM said Steven’s alarm clock from his unused bedroom in the loft above the living room. The house was silent but for the distant crash and rush of waves. The glowing numbers were the only source of light. Pearl was very concerned about wasting electricity lately. In the living room, a crumpled figure lay in a pile of blankets on the couch. Various notebooks and pens were open around her. She fell asleep while reading her latest favorite story to Steven and that book had fallen face first to the floor.

She breathed easy, oblivious. As Connie slept, the pink diamond nestled in mounds of blankets flickered delicately. The flickering went on for a few minutes, stronger each time. There was a buzz in the air now, a metallic, static-y feeling. And in the deep of the night, the pink light glowed brighter. Connie’s hair lifted up to float in a halo around her, and the fibers of the blanket waved like little anemones.

The diamond shifted and then floated into the air, spinning slowly. Brighter, brighter. Connie wrinkled her nose and opened her eyes. She gasped and jerked back as the light suddenly collected. A flash, and there was a figure floating above the table. Steven, made entirely of pink light.

“Steven!”

The figure looked down at her. Brief, subtle panic flashed across his mostly empty eyes.

Then all at once, the light flashed again, and Steven tumbled onto the floor, solid, but still pink.

Connie could hardly believe her eyes. She didn’t even remember getting up. She was just suddenly there, at his side, pulling him up into a sitting position.

“You’re okay, oh stars I thought you might never, we didn’t know if you would-” It was all too much and she started crying.

“Oh,” Steven said. He looked her in the eyes, clearly concerned but perhaps a bit confused, and wiped a tear from her cheek. “Everything is okay. Don’t cry, Connie.” His eyes darted around the empty room.

She laughed wetly and hugged him as tight as she could. He stiffened, but then wrapped his arms around her as well. It was difficult from a sitting position, but Connie didn’t mind.

“I thought I might never see you again.”

Steven said nothing. He burrowed his nose into the crook of her neck and then pulled back. “Oh,” he whispered again. 

Connie frowned and for the first time, really looked at him. “You’re all pink.”

Steven blinked. And that strange blankness, an eerily familiar look, crept across his face. Connie had seen the look before, from somewhere, hadn’t she?

Steven cleared his throat and pulled away entirely. His eyes were different, too, but they weren’t too disconcerting. His pupils were diamond shaped, and the irises dark pink. “I assumed that would be so. Also-” He tugged at his shirt, a black one she hadn’t seen before, and revealed the gem in his stomach.

Connie’s eyebrows raised. “No doubting it now, huh?”

“Correct,” Steven muttered. The diamond was back in the position Connie had seen it pictured on Pink Diamond. Steven was taking it… better than she thought he would. He pushed his shirt down and smiled at her.

“Are you… okay?” She asked. A rotten feeling was building in her stomach, getting worse and worse the longer Steven stared at her, eyes blank.

But then something changed. His expression relaxed. “I’m fine.”

He wasn’t, obviously.

But now wasn’t the time.

“Oh my gosh, we’ve got to tell everyone else! We’ve got to tell your dad!” She grabbed his hand. His skin was too cold.

Steven didn’t appear to notice. They took off out the front door, hand in hand.

_ He’s like Lars, _ Connie thought.  _ That must be it. He came back like Lars, pink and a little dead. _ She swallowed the rock in her throat at the thought. A little dead was better than all dead, right?

How often had they spent evenings running down an empty beach toward the open door of Steven’s home? They rushed down the stairs. Connie’s mind was going a million miles an hour. They talked as they ran.

“Where’s everyone else?”

They clambered out of the sand and onto the boardwalk.

“The gems are on a mission. Something about a stray corrupted gem in New Zealand? They should be back soon.”

Steven’s dad’s van was parked at the edge of the boardwalk, and they raced up to it. He would be sleeping, probably.

Steven suddenly stopped a few feet from the van. He looked around at the cracked landscape, still recovering from the injector. “How did… how long has it been?”

Connie’s mouth opened. She debated for a second. “Two-”

“Steven!” The van door burst open, and Greg flew out in his pajamas. Steven didn’t even have a chance to move before his dad barreled into him. Steven was too tall to be lifted up and spun around the way he was as a kid, but the same enthusiasm remained.

Steven stood stiff but managed the smallest bit of a smile. “Did you miss me?”

“Did I-? Are you  _ kidding?”  _ Greg choked and pulled his son in tighter.

Connie stepped away. This was a private moment. She walked to the edge of the van and pulled out her phone. She scrolled through the contacts until she brought up one she’d never had reason to use before.

The phone rang once.

“- _ am _ pressing it! Hello? Ah, oh, this is Pearl?”

“He’s back.” Connie almost started crying again.

The phone line hissed between them. Had she lost the signal?

“Pearl? Pearl, are you still there?”

“I-I’m here.” A pause. And then: “We’re on our way.”

* * *

The pink diamond reacted reflexively with Connie, scrambling for memories. He knew her, he did. He could see her in his mind’s eye, and he could categorize all of the interactions Steven had had. They were best friends. Or something. There was something more there, the diamond thought, but he did not know how to define it, so he ignored the uncertainty for now. She was his friend and she was  _ hugging _ him. Hugging was… not nice. It was restrictive and she was too hot and he hated it. But Steven loved hugs. So he hugged her back like he hoped Steven would. He wasn’t really even a ‘he’ though, was he? More of an it. He didn’t like that idea, however, and neither would Steven, if he was here.

The diamond hadn’t taken the time to come to a decision about anything, ever, in the whole of its thirty seconds of existence, but he knew it would hurt these people very badly if they knew Steven was gone. Steven did not like people being hurt. Steven would want him to keep them from being hurt.

So the diamond did not correct Connie when she called him Steven. He copied her smile when she smiled at him, and he rolled through as many memories of Steven’s behavior as he could in such a short amount of time.

It was not that difficult. He could do this.

Unfortunately it was much more difficult to hold conversations when there were more than one other individual involved. Steven’s organic contributor (his dad, Steven would have called him) spoke in a different way than Connie did, and the diamond struggled to understand him. Apparently language did not have set, uniform soundwaves. It was easy for Steven. The diamond was baffled. ‘Greg’ was difficult enough. Soon, there were many other gems joining them out on the beach. Their voices clashed with each other and the crashing waves. There were three short ones and a tall one. Their hands were all over him, pulling him close, touching his hair.

The skinny one wailed very loudly, but she managed to pull back, wipe her nose, and pat his head. “The pink isn’t so bad!”

“Yeah!” Connie supplied. “You’re like a glowstick!”

Glowsticks.

Those were significant in relation to Connie, were they not?

The diamond searched for a connection and came up short. Hmm. It was surely  _ something. _

The diamond did not get tired. He was just now alive. But Connie and ‘Dad’ did. He noted their yawns and the red around their eyes. Steven was empathetic. He should let them go to sleep.

“I am tired,” he said.

The gems, previously talking over each other in a joyous conglomeration, stopped short. “Oh!” said the little blue one. “Of course, Steven. We apologize. You should be resting.”

“Thank you, Sapphire.”

They were all staring at him now, foreheads furrowed. Had he done something wrong? Something not Steven? The diamond didn’t know. He cleared his throat. “We should…”

“We’ll head back to the house, Steven,” said Connie. “I’ll come with you!”

That seemed to break whatever spell was on the rest of them. They nodded in agreement, and followed Steven and Connie at a little distance. As they walked, Connie took his hand in hers. This was something she had done many times before and was something Steven had yet to categorize as a  _ friend  _ hand holding or a  _ hand holding  _ hand holding. The diamond wished he could kick him for that obvious oversight.

“Are you alright?”

He looked at her, and then back up at the beach house growing larger as they approached. “I am alive.”

Connie hummed. She tightened her hand around his once or twice. He responded in kind. “You’re right. You just seem a little… off.”

The diamond was afraid of this. He shrugged. “I am alive.”

“Yeah. Yeah, you’re right. I don’t think anyone would be all okay after what happened to you.”

“You want to ask what happened to me.”

A pause.

“If you’re tired, I can wait. It’s not like-”

“I am not sure.” Steven was honest with Connie. Connie appreciated that. The diamond searched once more for more of his own memories, beyond the theater in his mind, and came up short. This was disappointing, to say the least. It would be nice to be a person of his own.

He still needed to respond to Connie, but he also wasn’t really ready to talk about any of it.

“I think my memories have been… knocked around,” he settled on. It was mostly true.

This, unfortunately, did not appear to ease Connie. “What does  _ that mean _ ?”

“Nothing too drastic,” he said. They reached the stairs and the sand crunched under their feet against the wood as they climbed. “Like, glowsticks, right?”

Connie stopped and her hand slid from his. “... what about them?”

“They mean something to us.” He shrugged and opened the screen door. “But I don’t know what it is.”

The diamond was fairly good at reading facial expressions, but he did not see Connie’s as he walked into the house and up into Steven’s room, having assumed the conversation was at an end.

Connie stared after him with wide eyes, her hand tight on the wooden railing of the stairwell. “Oh,” she whispered.

Meanwhile, across town, in a deep wedge of the dark earth filled with grass and flowers and some young saplings, there was a rustle of leaves, an incoherent mumble, and then a hand, reaching out to the sky. It was followed by another hand, pushing the person up out of the hole they were wedged in, and a shock of thick black curls. As dawn crept across Beach City, Steven Universe pulled leaves out of his hair and looked up in bafflement at a purple, star scattered sky.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sup yall, two chapters in one day, huh? Its practically a miracle. I am sooo excited about where this story is going to go!


	3. Chapter 3

There was something to be said about small towns and the strange mix of escapism and community all bound up at once. Living in a small town was like being given a warm hug that lasted too long. There were those who had lived there their entire lives and wore angry smiles at the idea of abandoning it, and there were others who were born there and could not wait to get away, and yet felt guilty that they should want such a thing. Then there were those who found the town during a time of wandering and ended up settling down in the hope that they might join this strange group of people who seemed to love each other so much. All these types were mixed up and expected to go to the same grocery store and the same school and the same church like it was all some cosmic joke.

Lars was getting too thoughtful lately. He hadn’t grown in the years he’d been back home, although it wasn’t too obvious to an outside observer, and it was maybe the stagnation that made him feel so poignantly the state of the little town. They did the same things in the same way and walked the same streets over and over again. But they had the reprieve in getting a year older every year. People got married and their kids grew and old people joined different bingo clubs. 

Lars made pastries.

Sometimes he felt like he might blink a little too long and he’d be the only one left in this town, still making pastries he couldn’t taste. This isn't to say that he didn’t enjoy his job at the _ Spacteries  _ (god, wasn’t that just such a funny pun?) he just got thinking too much sometimes. He’d always wanted to get out of this town someday, but before he’d been too frightened to even consider leaving on his own. Now that things were… different. Once you’ve died, fought galactic terrorists, etc. everything else was not nearly as terrifying as it seemed. Besides, if he stayed here much longer, he was going to go insane. In space, the passage of time felt different. He couldn’t tell how long he’d been gone, and he didn’t have to watch each minute pass by on everyone else’s face.

The front door jingled and Lars glanced up, only to scramble to his feet, nearly pitching himself off of the rolling desk chair he spent time murdering his spine in.

“Steven?” he shrieked. “You’re back!”

Steven’s eyes widened, halfway in the door, half out. He was barefoot, his clothes ripped and dirty, and he was slightly thinner than Lars remembered him being. He glanced behind him as if Lars could be talking about someone else. It was early morning and there was no one else around. Steven had gotten so much taller recently, not all at once, but nearly. It was difficult to tell who was older now, Lars or Steven, just by looking at them, and the very idea scared Lars more than he thought it ought to.

“I… am,” Steven said.

Which was… a really weird response.

Lars paused, still on the worker side of the counter. He had his fingers splayed out on the glass display, leaving smudges he usually studiously avoided. “Are you okay?”

Steven nodded. He shut the door and looked around the shop with an unusual intensity. “I’ve, uh, I’ve been here before.”

“Yeah?”

Alright, none of this was normal. And that was saying a lot about Steven Universe, who was never normal. “How about you sit down, buddy? I’ll get you a donut. I just finished a batch. You can’t tell anyone I’m giving free donuts out though, and this is like a one-time thing, uh-”

Steven still hadn’t moved.

Lars walked toward him and carefully put a hand on his shoulder. He took Steven’s hand and guided him to one of the booths. Steven obeyed like he was made of putty. He just kept looking around with those wide eyes of his. Lars set him down and stepped back. He couldn’t panic. If he panicked, Steven might panic, and Lars didn’t know what to do if both of them panicked. 

“Okay!” he managed to squeak.

Steven’s gaze dropped to hands which he knotted very tightly.

“Steven?”

“... yeah?”

“Do you know who I am?”

Steven huffed like Lars was being silly and placed his hands flat on his knees. He snatched on a smile. “You’re my friend.”

Lars cocked his head. “And… my name?”

There is was; the panic again. Steven picked at the edge of the table. “You were gonna get me a doughnut.”

Crap.

Lars nodded and kept nodding even though it was weird and a little too much. He backed up into one of his chairs, and then went through the swinging door that separated the kitchen from the dining room. “Alright, don’t move, okay? I’ll be right back.”

“Okay!” He sounded upbeat, almost childlike. It was disarming.

The moment Lars made it to the kitchen out of Steven’s eyesight, he fumbled for his cellphone and fumbled for a donut off one of the racks in the back and fumbled for the 'on' button on the said-cellphone, and then he fumbled for a curse when it refused to turn on.

Why hadn’t he charged his phone?

No matter, he could use the desk phone. He poked an eye around the corner. Steven sat contentedly. The phone was on the wall behind the cash register, well in Steven’s view. Wonderful.

Lars forced the rest of him around the corner, the doughnut on a little white plate. When he moved, Steven looked at him with that same hopeful smile.

Gosh, something was very wrong.

Lars knew Steven had been ‘poofed’ by whoever brought the giant poison injector. Everyone did. Little Homeworld was on standstill, classes that were supposed to start on hold, building only continuing because Bismus needed something to do, and everyone anxiously waited for the inevitable arrival of the Diamonds (thank the stars for the time it took to travel through space). Lars knew that Steven’s gem had healed the ground of the injector’s poison when it fell, and he knew that the Crystal Gems were falling apart mentally and physically waiting for Steven to wake up again. Obviously, he was awake now. But why was he alone and why was he being so weird and what was he doing in Lar’s shop? Lars had enough to deal with!

Lars sat down in the booth across from Steven. He slid him the doughnut. The plate scraped across the wood.

Steven looked at it. He poked the icing and licked his finger. Apparently delighted by what he’d discovered, he picked up the doughnut and make quick work of it.

“I really like doughnuts,” he murmured. And then he looked up, grinning. “You make good doughnuts, Lars.”

Lars relaxed marginally. He did know who he was. “You scared me, kid. What’s going on? Are you alright?”

Steven nodded. “I’m fine. Hungry, actually. Like, super hungry. Do you have more of those or was that really a one time offer, because I don’t have any…” Steven trailed off. “Any uh...”

“Money?”

“Money!”

Lars rolled his eyes. “What’s the point of owning a bakery if you can’t give people an ungodly amount of pastries...” He grabbed a few more and this time Steven trailed behind him, into the kitchen, and back out. They spent the next few minutes eating doughnuts, and Lars tried not to stare too hard at Steven.

Maybe he was just confused. Maybe being poofed did this to him. Should he still call someone? He might just be overreacting. Steven was practically an adult. He didn’t need people nannying him all the time… While Steven rummaged around the kitchen for  _ more _ pastries (seriously, when was the last time he’d eaten?) Lars hesitated by the phone.

He put the decision off by straightening the cash register. He put the pens back into a little cup, straightened the gift cards, and reached around the computer to straighten a few brochures spilled on the counter in front of it. He usually kept this stuff neater... He picked up the brochures. They were neatly designed by Greg Universe (who was actually a weirdly good artist and for some reason no one ever talked about it?). **_Spaceteries_** **, run by your very own** ** _Lars Barriga_** said the front, along with a spaceship style donut.

Lars stilled. Oh.

Steven was being a bit too quiet back there.

Carefully stacking the brochures, Lars picked up the phone.

“Hey, Steven!” he called over his shoulder.

No answer.

He dialed (he’d taken the time to write the Crystal Gem’s numbers out on the backside of the register. You never knew when they would come in handy in this town). The phone rang and kept ringing.

< _ This is Pearl’s Cell Phone! Leave a… message?> _

Lars cursed and set the phone down. He walked into the kitchen, the coiled cord stretching behind him.

“Steven, I’m gonna call Pearl, okay? She can pick you up!”

The sight in the kitchen was just as Lars feared. The backdoor was open, a few trays missing pastries, and Steven Universe was nowhere to be found.

“Great…”

* * *

‘Steven’ walked down the boardwalk with a smile on his face, a hand full of pastries. The morning air was kind and the ocean looked beautiful, reflecting sparkles of light up in wiggly lines onto the sides of the buildings closest to the water.

Steven was glad he’d been informed of his name because he was starting to get worried that it wasn’t going to come back to him. But now there was no need to worry! The nice pink boy told him; the pink boy whose name was Lars and who, thank goodness, was the owner of the shop and not just some employee, which he possibly could have been and then  _ not _ named Lars. Steven didn't need to worry him.

The boardwalk was empty, which was good. It was still early in the morning, Steven guessed. The whole town felt wonderfully friendly and familiar and he was sure he’d been here before.

He must have hit his head or something. That was the only reason he could come up with for waking up in a hole like some kind of zombie with no idea how he got there. He didn’t even like zombies. He hadn’t been allowed to watch zombie movies when he was a kid.  Steven stopped walking. He took an idle bite of one of the three doughnuts he had left in his arms. He remembered not watching zombie movies and being so mad about it even though they would have given him nightmares. But who’d told him not to watch those movies? His stomach lurched.

Steven sure did like these doughnuts! He turned toward the beach and jumped down onto the sand. He liked the smell of salt and the cool sand between his toes. He walked to the water's edge, and he looked down at his last doughnut.

“I just walked out of there with someone’s merchandise,” Steven said out loud. He shook his head. “I just  _ stole  _ his doughnuts.”

The ocean waves crashed.

“What the heck is wrong with me?”

He ate the last one because that was better than stealing it and then throwing it away, but he  _ did  _ feel remorseful.

Sitting down in the sand, Steven stared out at the horizon. His hands kept moving, pinching the skin on his wrist, digging in the sand, cracking his knuckles. He was fine. This was all fine. He was in a safe place and everything was going to come back to him soon. He just needed to relax.

“Chill, Steven,” he said. “We’re named Steven and we like doughnuts and…” 

And he didn’t know much else right now. “But that’s okay.” He tossed some sand into the water. “It’s only been, what, two hours of wandering around? And you already know your name and a thing you like!” The sand plopped unenthusiastically into the foam. “Yeah, but what if you run into more people who know who you are? What are you gonna do then, huh?”

Steven chewed his lip. “I’ll figure that out when I get to it.”

Standing, he brushed the sand off of him and started towards the boardwalk. There was an itch in the back of his mind. He was supposed to be doing something. Somebody needed him, didn't they?

It was going to drive him mad if he didn't remember soon.

That’s when he heard it.

“Steven!” shrieked a voice. Steven jumped toward the noise. Lars! Lars was after him and he was probably mad that he stole all those doughnuts!

Steven scrambled forward and dropped below the edge of the boardwalk, effectively out of Lars’s view.

“Steven, where did you go? You’ve got to come back! Pearl's not answering!”

Pearl. That was another name Lars kept saying. Cursing, Steven crawled along the edge of the boardwalk, close to a dock that reached out to the water and would be a more effective hiding place. He managed to make it into the shadows, and he waited, curled into a ball until Lar’s voice faded into the distance. Slowly, he unwound and peeked over the edge of the boardwalk. Coast clear. He giggled. Coast clear. Get it? Like, coast- alrighty that was enough of that.

Steven pulled himself back onto the street and continued on his way toward the edge of the town. He wanted to eventually get to the end of the peninsula. It felt like the right thing to do.

As he continued on his way, he ducked and hid anytime someone passed his way. It was an incredibly ineffective method of conflict avoidance. It was only a matter of time before a young woman jogged past him, a giggling orange creature no taller than Steven’s waist in her wake. Steven was so shocked by the strange creature he stood stalk still.

“Oh Steven!” said the girl, “You’re back! Awesome!” She kept running, clearly on some mission.

Why did everyone know who he was?

“Steven is awake and doesn’t know who we are!” said the orange creature cheerily.

That made the girl pause. She slowed and came back to the orange creature, who had stopped in front of Steven.

“What are you talking about, Padparadscha?” She looked Steven up and down. “Are you okay?”

Steven cocked his head at the orange girl. “Yeah, I’m fine! Not sure what she means. She, did she... I, uh, actually was looking for-”

“Steven is lying!”

Oh, stars. Steven tried to keep the smile on his face. “You look busy! I was actually just looking for, um, Paprika! We’ll be, uh, um, we’ll be right back!” He took the creature by the arm and as gently but as quickly as he could, pulled her away down several twisted alleys.

“Steven!” the girl shouted after him. “I need her to help cut pepperoni! Bring her down by the shop later!”

“Okay!” he called back. There was a thickness in his throat and he was afraid if he kept speaking it would just shut up entirely. He picked up the little girl and ran faster down the alleys, as far as he could away from the voice.

“Steven is frightened!” said the orange girl.

“I’m not!” Steven was panting. He put her down and smoothed her ruffled dress. “Sorry about that.” Kneeling down to her level, he was pretty sure no one would see them behind the various dumpsters and trash cans in the alley.

“How do you know I don’t know who you are? Who are you?” Steven knew the creature was a person. He knew the creature was harmless, a friend, even. That was about it.

The orange girl just smiled, hands clasped in front of her.

Steven waited. 

“Uh… did you hear me?”

“You don’t have to lie to me, Steven Universe!”

Oh, dear. “I’m not lying! I’m just… trying to get ahold of things. I don’t want to freak anyone out.” This wasn't a big deal. He could figure this out.

The orange girl nodded. “I am an unaligned gem!” She held out her right hand graciously, like a queen expecting her knuckles to be kissed. There was a large orange gem embedded into the back of that hand. “My friends call me Padparadscha. I see into the past! You are Steven Universe, a diamond and my friend.”

He frowned. Steven’s stomach ached at her words. He wondered if he ate those doughnuts too fast. She spoke in such a strange way, he wasn’t sure she was actually looking, or even speaking remotely at or to him. But she said she was a gem. A living gem? Okay. He knew that.

However. “I’m not a diamond, I’m a boy,” he corrected.

“They are already worried, Steven Universe!”

That response… did not make sense. He stared at her. “I need to get to the cliff. Do you think that’s a good idea?”

“You are both!” she said. “It’s very unprecedented!”

“What?”

“I think it is the best course of action! I will come with you.” She put her little hand in his.

Steven nodded and stood up with a groan. He was suddenly aware that he was standing in piles of garbage with bare feet. “Gross…” He backed out of the alley, hand in hand with Padparadscha, and she took the lead, pulling him down the winding streets like she’d been down them thousands of times.

His hand kept coming back to his stomach, plucking at the hem of his shirt, touching the edges of his pants. The shirt itched. As they exited the town, they walked down a rundown road toward the beach. To their left, a grand slope of grass stretched out to the sky. To the right, the beach bent around the cliff, hiding the edge of the peninsula from view. They clambered over rocks and a dirt road that ended in a sort of boardwalk that eventually gave way to nothing but sand.

Finally, they rounded the corner.

An incredible sight opened up, one that had Steven frozen solid. On the backside of the hill, the cliff had been carved away to reveal a massive statue of a woman with outstretched arms. At her stomach, a little house on stilts glowed with friendly lights. There was no movement. It was still early.

Overwhelmed all at once by a sense of wrongness, Steven swallowed thickly. He’d been here before. Not just once, but over and over and over again. It was like looking into mirrors facing each other. Steven knotted up the edge of his shirt anxiously and smoothed it out again.

Padparadscha gasped, pulling her hand away from his. “Steven’s gem is gone!”

There was  _ something _ that was supposed to be on his stomach that very much was not and this beach before them made him want to puke. He felt like he’d just realized he was missing a limb. He was missing a limb he’d forgotten he was supposed to have.

He hardly heard Padparadscha as she continued to prattle on. Instead, he sank down and put a hand onto the sand, and then another. “I just… need a second.” His head buzzed. He sat.

“We have to get to the Crystal Gems!”

He had no idea who those people were and stars, he was  _ so scared. _

Steven trembled and dropped his head into his hands.  _ Pull it together. _ “I’m alright, Pad, uh, Paddy- uck. I’ll be okay. Just give me a minute.”

“We don’t have a second!” Padparadscha said. “Oh, don’t cry!”

“I’m not crying!” Steven cleared his throat and smiled at her. He balled his hands into fists and forced himself onto his feet again. He was almost to the house. Everything would be better once he got to the house. “Come on.”

Hands over her mouth, Padparadscha trailed behind him as he walked, as purposefully as he could toward the friendly house. He pointed at it. “Look!” he croaked, “We’re almost there!”

Padparadscha said nothing.

He kept going. There was help in the house. He’d be okay if he got to the house.

He was nearly two-thirds of the way there when he passed a volleyball court. Beyond that, he squinted as a splash of color caught his eye. Beneath the house, on the sand between the stilts, sat a small, bright pink figure. A jolt went through him like he’d been shoved.

Steven ran faster. Padparadscha shouted after him, but he paid her no mind. He was focused on the person beneath the house, and as Padparadscha rushed up the stairs and into the house, Steven stopped at the first stilt and paused to catch his breath.

The pink figure was a short and stocky young man with curly hair. He wore normal clothes, a t-shirt, jacket, and jeans, that clashed strangely with his glowing, not-quite-solid looking skin. At the sound of Steven’s approach, he’d stood up and stared at him with an open mouth, apparently too shocked to speak.

Steven knew this person.  _ He knew _ he knew this person. “You,” he managed. "You know me."

The pink boy blinked once, slowly. Comprehension spread across his features. His voice was soft, but Steven could hear him as if he was directly whispering into his ear. “Oh.”

What kind of thing was that to say?

“Well?” he snapped.

There was a great flurry of sound from above them, slamming doors, rushing steps. The pink boy’s eyes grew large. He jumped forward and grabbed Steven’s hand with more strength and speed than Steven was even slightly comfortable with. If he tried to pull away, Steven didn’t think he could. But he didn’t.

“I have miscalculated,” the boy said in that strange quiet/loud voice. “Quick!”

And before Steven could even begin to think of a reply, the boy pulled him out from under the house and down the beach. They ran very quickly. The boy seemed to find no resistance in the sand, and Steven stumbled frantically behind. “What’s wrong? Where are we going!”   


The boy gave no answer. He drug Steven behind several tall rocks littering the beach, and then up to the side of the cliff, where they scrambled up some other rocks, into a tiny crevice. For a moment, Steen began to panic, but then the crevice let out into a much larger, shadowy place, hidden from any prying eye.

Finally, the pink boy let Steven go. He relaxed slightly. “They won’t find us here.”

At that moment, Steven had no idea whether or not this was a good thing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ahhh, i really enjoyed writing Lars and Padparadscha. Thank you so much for all of the people who've responded already!! I'm blown away by how much you guys like this!! This is gonna be a wild ride.


	4. Chapter 4

Steven played hide and seek in this cave when he was very young. He would hide here from the gems and the gems never found him, not once. He only found the cave himself because he used to play with the seagulls. When he was no older than four, Steven wanted a pet seagull. His daddy told him he could only have one if he made it his friend. So he spent hours wandering up and down the beach, giving various seagulls chips and bread until they swarmed around him like a tornado, begging for more. They snapped at his fingers and pulled the bread out of his hands. Steven cried out, and then he tried to run, but the greedy things kept coming. Steven waved at them. He didn’t want to hurt the birds, but they hurt him. Abandoning his pouch of bread scraps, he ran, sobbing, up the hill toward the house. He scrambled beneath the beams and sniffed back snot as he risked a glance at his assailants.

The seagulls ate from the plastic bag and carried sizeable chunks to the cliff where they appeared to disappear.

So Steven found the cave. Steven discarded this memory early on, but for a slight hesitancy around seagulls, and placing the cave. Steven didn’t recall the entire chain of events. But that was all right because Steven didn’t need to know. The diamond remembered for him. Just in case. The memory of the seagulls did not do the diamond any good. He still didn’t know what to do.

The diamond took stock of Steven. He appeared distressed, his hands clammy and shaky and his face pale. How strange to see him from the outside. He was older, taller, and stronger than he appeared in the diamond’s mind. Steven glanced around the cave-like he’d never seen it before. Why?

The diamond reached a hand toward Steven’s shirt. Steven jerked back.

The diamond paused. He tried again, slower. “I do not intend to harm you, Steven Universe.”

Steven cleared his throat and rubbed the hem between his thumb and finger. “Sorry. Yeah, sorry. I just… something’s wrong.”

The diamond imagined he would think so. He waited until Steven nodded before reaching out again and tugging up the torn blue shirt. The diamond considered the sight before him before dropping the shirt again. Steven’s stomach was empty. Not even a belly button. Eerie. When Steven looked down at his own belly, his face paled.

“There is something wrong with me, isn’t there?”

The diamond wasn’t sure how this happened. How did Steven get here? His heart beating, he breathed, his cells metabolized. He was alive, which made no sense. The last time they separated, (and yes, he could recall, now that he thought back) Steven could not last more than a few minutes without him. He was Steven’s life force. Wasn’t he?

Apparently not anymore.

What did that even mean? What were they then?

Steven stared at him like he needed an answer.

“Is it because I don’t have a belly button? Is that a bad thing? People usually have belly buttons?”

The diamond blinked. “No! No, you are perfectly healthy. It is because I,” He lifted his own shirt to show him, “am not… there.” He pointed to Steven’s bare stomach. “It’s strange that you would not know this.”

Steven made a sound that was something like a laugh, but the diamond wasn’t sure what he found funny, “I know little of anything at all.”

Oh?

Oh.

The diamond pursed his lips. “Of course. I am missing some key connections as well.”

Steven shook his head. “I remember nothing before last night. I woke up in the ground in this- this crack?” Steven’s heart started beating faster, which meant he was frightened.

The diamond didn’t know how to fix that. He almost put his hand on Steven’s shoulder and then dropped it. “The gems think I am you. I… apologize.”

Steven blinked. “The who?”

“The gems that raised you. Your family. I assumed that you were dead.”

In the deep shadows of the cave, Steven’s face stuck a little, and his brow furrowed. “My… and you thought you’d just take my place? You’d just lie to them?”

“I assumed it would be easier!”

“But you’re not me!”

“I am you!”

Steven backed up a step. “No, that doesn’t make any sense.” He wrinkled his nose and paced away from him, arms crossed. How could the diamond possibly explain this to him, especially if he was working with no memories at all? Did Steven even know what fusion was? The diamond wasn’t sure if a fusion was what they were anyway.

It was then the gems passed by their spot panicking. Their voices bounced off the cliff walls and echoed down the beach, loud, anxious, confused cries.

Steven stiffened, eyes wide. “Who-”

It wasn’t fair to keep them from the real Steven. The diamond didn’t know what he’d been thinking. Steven was right to be angry at him. The diamond carefully took Steven’s hand and led him to the exit. They squeezed out and dropped onto the sand, still cooled by the dew of night. Steven held his hand tighter than probably necessary, shaking slightly. “I don’t understand. How can you be me?”

“It’s all right, Steven. The gems will know what to do. They’ll fix you.”

They stood on the beach for only a short moment before Pearl spotted them from further down the beach. She turned, mid-word, and did a noticeable double-take. The others soon joined her. They ran up to Steven and the diamond, and then they were surrounded by a loose circle of Steven’s shocked family. Garnet, Pearl, Amethyst, and Greg (Connie had left for school earlier).

No one spoke. The ocean waves crashed. A seagull picked at a wrapper buried in the sand, oblivious to the tight ropes of tension.

“What?” Amethyst shrieked. “There’s two of you now?!”

The diamond opened his hand and pulled it out of Steven’s grasp, nudging him slightly toward them. “STeven is alive.”

A pause, again, and then all at once, everyone was shouting, blabbing over each other, in a way the diamond did not bother to understand.

Steven backed up, slipping in the sand, but the diamond kept him forward.

“Alright! Alright, everyone shut up!” Greg flapped his hands. He walked up to them slowly. “I… don’t understand. Steven, what’s going on?” His eyes flicked back between the diamond and Steven. Who was he directing the question to?

Steven glanced back at the diamond eyes wide. “Uh, don’t ask me. I know nothing.”

Pearl and Garnet exchanged looks, more questioning than knowing. Garnet met the diamond’s eyes. “Steven.”

The diamond’s throat stuck unexpectedly. He cleared it. “I am not Steven. I am a diamond.”

Steven shivered.

The diamond gave them a brief, authentic rundown of what he’d experienced, and then Steven quietly told them where he’d been since he’d woken up.

Once they finished, Pearl looked like she was about to have a stroke. She threw her hands in the air. “Why didn’t you say something before?”

The diamond blinked. “I assumed Steven was dead. Being Steven in his place seemed to be the best alternative for all parties involved. I apologize for the deception.”

He waited for the rage to bubble up in them, for their weapons to appear, for them to scream and shout and lock him somewhere for a very long time.

They did none of those things. Everyone… looked confused.

Which was fair, because to be honest, he was getting confused too?

“But…” Greg shook his head. “But you are Steven. The gem part of Steven. Right?” He looked around for agreement.

Garnet pursed her lips. “There has been nothing like Steven before. I couldn’t say whether Steven is half of his gem or the gem is half of Steven or the human part is Steven, or the gem is Steven, or how his human half could be alive without the other…” She trailed off. “I understand the confusion, Steven. Er... do you want to be called Steven?”

The diamond cocked his head. “I don’t know.”

Pearl swiped the question away with a flick of her hand. “We can figure that out later. Right now we need the diamonds. They’ll be able to fuse you back together! Obviously this is some strange reaction to being poofed!”

“But why would I wake up now?” asked Steven, who hadn’t spoken for quite a while.

Pearl opened her mouth and then closed it again. “Well… I-”

“And if the last time something separated us, I nearly died, why am I okay now?”

“It’s-”

“Also, how does a human-gem hybrid even exist? You guys are harvested, not born?”

Pearl glanced at Greg and back at the two of them. “It’s… a long story. If we can get you two fused, you’ll- wait!” Pearl perked up like a startled bird. “Have you tried fusing on your own?”

Steven shook his head slowly. He glanced at the diamond. “What’s fusion?”

“It’s when two or more gems fuse creating an entirely separate entity.”

Steven processed this. “And we used to be fused before something happened? But… I’m not a gem.”

What did that matter?

It hit them like a load of sand. The diamond ran calculations in his head, fact-checking any knowledge he could recall. Steven was right. As far as they knew, humans could not fuse with gems. And Steven was a human now. But hadn’t they fused again before? The first time we separated?

Then again, that was different. They were only barely separate, Steven still dependent on him. That was not the case now.

Amethyst cursed quietly. “Steven fused with humans all the time!”

“Only because he was half-human,” the diamond countered. “I do not think it would work now.” It was one of the few times being a diamond was not enough.

No one moved.

Garnet broke the indecision by walking up to them and crouching down, a hand on each of their shoulders. Her touch put the diamond on edge, which was probably exactly opposite of her intentions, so he kept his face blank. Steven noticeably relaxed at her touch. She gave them a small smile. “We’re just glad to have you back. Either of you. The diamonds will know what to do.”

* * *

Luckily, it didn’t take much longer for 'the diamonds’ to arrive. They’d already been taking longer than usual to get to Earth (something to do with the bureaucracy of leaving a planet leaderless, even if for a brief time)?

Everyone was on their toes. They had to explain the entire situation to Connie again once she rode over on her bike after school, and Steven could tell she was having a hard time with it and trying to act like it was okay. It was sweet.

He hadn’t known her, obviously. He was more irritated than frightened by his lack of memories now that he was around people who knew him. It irritated him he was being such a huge bother and making everyone act so weird. The pink version of him was… strange. He alternated between being relaxed, natural, and nearly normal, to suddenly lapsing into this monotone, robotic way of doing everything, before catching himself and relaxing again. It was eerie. Steven wasn’t sure how on earth these people thought the pink gem was anything like him?

He was in the bathroom when Connie got home from school, staring at his face in the mirror. He ignored the sounds from outside, although he heard their voices rising and falling. He’d showered and changed his clothes into a yellow shirt and some jeans the tall, skinny gem handed him. He wiped the moisture off the mirror and wrinkled his nose at himself. It made sense now. He looked like the diamond, exactly like him, just… human. This sent a small thrill of something through him. How old was he? When was the last time he had a haircut? How long was he in that hole? If he’d been in a coma, wouldn’t his hair be longer? Shouldn’t his body have atrophied? What was going on? Who were the diamonds anyway? He felt like he’d opened a book to the middle and tried to just start reading. Except this was worse because the book was his life and he felt awful about everything and he couldn’t remember why.

He smiled widely.

“Don’t be a baby. You’re fine. Everything will be okay. There’s no reason to overreact. The diamond queen people will get here, they’ll use their gem powers to fuse us back together or whatever, and then we can go back to our normal life! Might even make it to school on Monday!”

Why couldn’t he have been the pink donut boy that he stole those donuts from? Wouldn’t that be much simpler? Right now he was human. Just normal. He figured, anyway. He could be a doughnut boy, couldn’t he? He could deliver newspapers and go to school and have a girlfriend and eat cereal and whatever else normal humans did.

Did he know what normal humans did?

He did. Of course, he did!

Steven leaned away from the mirror, suddenly concerned. Why did he know some things and not others anyhow? He knew what gems were. He knew what a human was. He knew that people went to school. He knew people had jobs.

Steven just didn’t remember what school he went to or if he had friends or if he went to summer camp as a kid or if he was better at math than English or if he liked to go to the movies or if he and his dad went on fishing trips or anything that he surely must have done and been.

He mussed his hair in a towel and shook his head. He needed those memories. They were important. He also needed to stay calm.

When he opened the bathroom door, everyone stopped and stared at him in the way people do when they are talking about you before you walk in.

Steven didn’t know what to do with this. He tried smiling. “Um, thanks, uh, for the clothes, the pearl.”

Pearl, from her position cross armed by the fridge, tightened her lips in what might have been an attempt at a smile in return. “It’s just Pearl, Steven.”

Oh. Right.

So why was the diamond called the diamond and not just Diamond?

Now that he thought about it, had anyone said what the diamond called himself? Was he just assuming?

“Steven?” There was a girl in front of him, her backpack still half on. Steven blinked out of his thoughts and tried to focus. He kept screwing up with everyone. He needed to be more careful. The girl was the most beautiful person he had seen in the whole twelve hours he could remember, which didn’t help. She looked kind and her eyes were intelligent and she was giving him an open-ended, slightly watery gaze. She hesitated before throwing her arms around him. Steven stepped back, startled, but after a second, he hugged her back.

Her hair smelled fantastic. Like some kind of subtle rose thing. She was small enough to fit in his arms easily and felt really, really nice-

“The gems explained what happened. I’m so sorry, Steven. This has to be so scary.” She stepped back, looking a bit abashed. 

Oh god. He was supposed to say something to her.

“Connie, right?”

His words made her light up. “You remember me?”

He loved her. 

Weird how easy it was. He wanted her to smile again.

“Um, bits and pieces. It’s kind of mixed up.”

From across the room at the breakfast counter, the pink version of him looked up with a confused tilt of his head. He knew Steven knew nothing.

Steven shot him the slightest glare.

The diamond raised an eyebrow. He went back to stirring a bowl of cereal he wasn’t eating.  _ No need to be a pain about it. _ The voice rang clear, a direct whisper in Steven’s ear, though the diamond’s mouth never opened.

Steven didn’t have the mental energy to unpack that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> how we all doing after those final episodes, guys? personally, I really found the ending satisfying. it was pretty much like I thought it would be, which wasn't a bad thing tbh. Anyway, I've actually planned out the entire character arcs and the plot literally in a collum chart thing at the bottom of my google doc and I'm just really excited. Steven's relationship with his diamond is really fascinating (like that one scene with White?? what even???) and I just really want to explore it. So yeah. I hope you guys liked this chapter. I'm thinking the next one will be the end of the 'beginning' section of this story and we can actually get into some of the stuff I've got planned, so that's exciting!! hopefully, this story can help you guys span the gap before finding something else to be obsessed with lol now that Steven Universe is finished

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Please leave a review if you enjoyed!


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